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Patent Disclosures And Time, Timothy R. Holbrook

Vanderbilt Law Review

Patents by their very nature are pregnant with considerations of time. The exclusive rights they afford only last for a finite period- generally from issuance until twenty years from the filing date of the application. Moreover, since patents necessarily engage with the evolution of technology, patents reflect various "snap shots" in time that reflect the state of the art at a particular moment. Patent law must constantly wrestle with time. Many of these topics have been explored extensively in both judicial decisions and the literature. The most obvious example of considering the temporal aspect of patent law is ... obviousness. …